A variety of data storage media have been proposed in the art to store and retrieve digitally encoded data in a fast and efficient manner. Such media include magnetic recording discs, optical recording discs, solid-state memories (e.g., flash memory), etc.
Some media, such as conventional optical discs, can be rotated at a selected velocity while a head assembly transduces a read back signal to recover a data pattern stored to a media surface. The data patterns are often arranged on such media along a series of concentric tracks (e.g., discrete rings, a continuous spiral, etc.) that extend circumferentially around the surface of the disc. An actuator, under the control of a closed loop servo circuit, can be moved to radially position the head assembly adjacent the tracks in order to recover the data patterns by detecting a succession of optically discernable marks (e.g., pits and lands, etc.).
Optical discs are currently used to store a variety of different types of data, such as random access computer programming data (e.g., game console discs, etc.) and streamed audio/video data (e.g., audio discs, movie discs, etc.). A number of commercially successful, widely-implemented standards for optical discs have been developed including compact disc (CD), digital versatile disc (DVD), high density DVD (HD-DVD), Blu-Ray (BD), etc. These and other standards often call for the arrangement of the user data in the form of addressable data blocks, or sectors, of selected size (e.g., 2352 bytes, etc.). Control information such servo data, subcode bits, address headers, error detection and correction (EDC) codes (P0 and P1 parity codes, Reed Solomon codes, etc.) may also be stored to the disc to facilitate the recovery of the user data blocks.
While operable to store relatively large amounts of data in a computerized format, a limitation to the use of optical discs and other forms of media to store documents and other archived objects is the software and/or hardware requirements necessary to locate, decode and reconstruct the archived objects.
For example, it has not been that many years ago when a popular archive media was the 3½ inch floppy diskette; today, it is becoming increasingly difficult to even locate a 3½ inch floppy diskette drive to enable files from this format to be accessed. Similarly, new codecs, versions of software, drivers, etc. make it increasingly less likely that files stored in the form of computerized data using existing software formats will be able to be easily recovered in the future after even a moderate amount of time has passed.